Slander is one of the daily habits of some members of our political class in Malaysia, and for them, it is a standard issue thing to expect as part of the culture – for some people, in fact, it is viewed as a duty.
What does this suggest?
It suggests that these people have no principles, there is nothing worth admiring about their past, present, or their future, and that their culture is inferior.
It looks like we’ve leveled up a little bit, though, because we’ve gone and straight up slandered not just Malaysian politicians at this point, but in fact the United States of America, to the point that the US Embassy had to come out and make the following response.
Why? Because one of our national jokes is casually insinuating that America tried to bring about a regime change in Malaysia with no evidence, hoping that his stupid followers will blend together with the people out there watching Fahrenheit 911 both for conspiratorial and legitimate purposes and somehow bring about a wave of people who will allegedly push against America with enough plausible deniability that people will ignore the fact that the onus is on the accuser to prove their claims.
In a way, we could say that this is a rather sophisticated strategy and a somewhat unsurprising correlate of the fact that these people do this kind of thing all day and all night as they live and as they breathe, in their sermons, in every single articulation of their faith, as an expression of their existences, dedicated entirely to gaslighting.
No wonder their skills on this front are on the “international level”.
Unfortunately, the way it plays out in Malaysia, what people can infer is this:
The more religious these people are, the more likely they are to take part in garbage like this.
Honestly, one of the things that makes me want to give up on Malaysia is that this class of people are likely to succeed by recruiting their mindless supporters and talking to them about race and religion – and when I say “mindless”, I mean that over the course of time, I’ve gone from thinking that they could possibly be people with hopes and dreams to considering that they do not have any deep internal lives or meaningful culture or otherwise.
But there’s an even worse outcome from this.
I used to think that it was a bad thing to think this way, but in time, I’ve come to realize that the rest of the world will probably end up seeing them the same way as well, and that likely members of their own community see themselves this way as well and they are likely adjusting given the circumstances ala “we are already so terrible, and since the world already sees us as being so terrible, we still have to live and have jati diri right? So let’s slander as much as we can because that’s what it is!”
Well, similar to the men of Odysseus who ate the cattle of the Sun God, they’ve chosen their path.
Might write more on this a little later, but I have to go out.
Till then!
